London — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is once again mired in a scandal over his decision to appoint a former friend of Jeffrey Epstein as the U.K.’s ambassador in Washington. Despite disparaging Starmer repeatedly in recent weeks over his stance on the Iran war, President Trump weighed in to offer some much needed — if slightly tepid — support on Monday evening.
Some members of Britain’s parliament are demanding that Starmer resign amid new revelations about the government vetting process for Peter Mandelson, who has a long history of close ties with the late American financier and convicted sex offender.
“Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom acknowledged that he ‘exercised wrong judgement’ when he chose his Ambassador to Washington. I agree, he was a really bad pick,” Mr. Trump wrote after Starmer apologized again to Epstein’s victims and the British public on Monday for his decision.
“Plenty of time to recover, however!” added Mr. Trump.
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What did Keir Starmer know and when?
The latest manifestation of the Mandelson scandal — which drew calls for Starmer to resign based on previous revelations in February — centers on what the prime minister knew, or should have known, about a government security vetting that apparently deemed the Epstein associate a poor choice for the ambassadorship.
Starmer fired Mandelson — a mainstay of Starmer’s own Labour Party since the 1990s — from his job as the British ambassador to the U.S. in September, soon after details of the depth of his friendship with Epstein emerged in the infamous files released in Washington.
In February, London’s Metropolitan police arrested Mandelson after emails among the Epstein files appeared to show he had shared confidential, market-sensitive information with the American — who had by that point pleaded guilty to soliciting sex from a minor.
Mandelson remains under investigation, but his bail conditions have been lifted. He has previously denied any knowledge of or complicity in Epstein’s sexual crimes.
Starmer has always insisted he was unaware of Mandelson’s close ties to Epstein when he tapped him for the ambassadorship.
On Monday, facing a barrage of questions in parliament, the prime minister blamed Britain’s Foreign Office for not flagging to him or his cabinet concerns raised about Mandelson during a formal security vetting carried out in January 2025, several months after Starmer announced his appointment for the diplomatic role.
U.S. Department of Justice 
While apologizing for an error of judgment, Starmer called it “frankly staggering” that Foreign Office officials didn’t inform him of Mandelson’s history, and he said he would have rescinded the appointment had he been aware of the concerns.
Last week, Starmer fired Sir Olly Robbins, who was the Foreign Office’s most senior civil servant at the time of Mandelson’s appointment and vetting.
But during Monday’s rowdy parliamentary session, Starmer was hounded by lawmakers from every party but his own, left and right, claiming he was either lying about what he knew, or guilty of ineptitude for not obtaining the information.
Two members of parliament (MPs) were kicked out of the chamber for flatly accusing him of lying, which is against the rules of the House of Commons.
Carl Court/Pool/AP 
“That man couldn’t lie straight in bed,” quipped the far-right Reform party’s Lee Anderson.
Zarah Sultana, who was a Labour MP until she left the party in 2024 to join a new, far-left party, accused Starmer of “gaslighting the nation,” telling the chamber: “Let’s call this out for what it is; the Prime Minister is a bare-faced liar, and if he had any decency left, he would resign.”
Fired civil servant claims an “atmosphere of pressure”
Robbins, the recently-fired civil servant, wasn’t going down without a fight.
Facing questions from MPs over his role in the Mandelson appointment, he told the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday there was an “atmosphere of pressure” from Starmer’s office.
There was “a very, very strong expectation” that Mandelson “needed to be in post and in America as quickly as possible,” and Starmer and his cabinet had “a generally dismissive attitude” to the security vetting, Robbins said.
He added that after the vetting, the agency he ran had been “leaning toward recommending against” giving Mandelson security clearance, which is required for an ambassadorship, but said the concerns about him did not relate to his relationship with Epstein. He declined to say what the concerns were about.
Starmer managed to stave off the previous calls for his resignation earlier this year, including some from within his own party.
But Labour is not doing well in opinion polls ahead of local elections in May, so opposition parties’ demands for Starmer to be held accountable for the Mandelson appointment — and for his party to pay the price in votes — are only likely to mount.
